What can I rant about?

Today’s rant is by guest columnist Jason C. McLean and the views represented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Forget The Box Media, its affiliates or Laurence Tenenbaum

I’ve gotta write what now? You’re kidding! The rant? Laurence’s rant? But I’m the guy that covers politics, community issues, sometimes theatre and even a bit of music from a cool, opinionated though still somewhat detached perspective. That’s my thing, my shtick, as it were. How the hell am I supposed to be the guy who rants?

What should I rant about? Well I could rant about this post being over a day lateâ€¦naw, I’ll just backdate it so it looks like it came out Monday (that’ll fool â€˜em). What else then? It’s not like there’s a lack of things that piss me off.

Hmm, I could take a cue from the Laurence playbook and talk about problems with public transport. I could mention how Montréal doesn’t even have accordion busses. Oh, no, wait, we do now:

Took long enough: accordeon bus in Montreal (photo by Jason C. McLean)

That’s right, it’s 2010 and our bus design is finally at par with such major urban centers as Ottawa and Longueil! Yay!

Wait, I know, I could rant about the fact that I have to find some sort of “real” job that pays money, but potential employers might be reading this, so yay job! Besides, that’s not what pisses me off. Everyone needs some sort of income in order to live and eat and that income needs to be earned, that’s just the way things are.

What really grinds my gears (thanks Seth Macfarlane) is the fact that there are still some people that don’t consider unpaid work that someone works their ass off for (usually while doing a paid gig on the side) to be valid. Don’t introduce me as the guy who does x job, that’s secondary to me and nothing more than a way for me to eat. Introduce me as the guy who does projects like this site, because that’s what I care about. It’s also who I am as opposed to who someone else pays me to be.

Work done for the purpose of it being done and it getting out there is just as valid as any other type of work. In fact, there’s more heart and purpose in something done for non-financial reasons. If work that was conceived for the right reasons gets a bit of funding or a lot of funding and keeps its heart and purpose, all the better, I’m all for making money from what I do creatively, just not for altering the creativity to please those with money.

Still, there are some people that view anything without a budget as somehow subpar and not real. What’s the difference between a good and funded project and a good unfunded project, really? It’s the fact that someone or some people with cash decided to throw some of it in the right direction. That is all.

We’ve got to stop basing the validity of our actions on their economic success. That only helps to validate a system that is fucked up to the core. But hey, maybe some day someone will throw some money to something I want to do regardless of pay and then all I do will be “real”, so nothing to rant about here.

Let’s see, I could rant about the corrupt state of our municipal politics, provincial politics, federal politics, hell, politics, but that’s really nothing new, besides, politics is my actual column. I could rant about the Habs losing game 2 except for the fact that this is being published on “Monday” which is a day before that happened, plus we already have someone covering Hockey.

I could rant about wars for profit, because that’s pretty much what all of them are, but then, to rant against something is kind of like an attack, which is a war-like gesture unbefitting a pacifist, so those war-mongering vultures that influence and in some cases run our governments will get off the hook easy without a rant.

I could rant about greedy assholes. They’re everywhere. Thugs, muggers and the like, despite their gangster-cool, are just as much capitalist thugs as the sleazebags who run sketchy corporations.

Already covered but always room for more: Bell

Speaking of corporations, if they really are considered people, then they’re the only type of people that it’s okay to abuse and discriminate against. They’re the bottom of the food chain and can only be redeemed if they assist in their own destruction or assist those with a better plan for the world then them.

If I ranted against corporations, though, those bottom-feeding, backstabbing goat-fucking troglodytes might sue for defamation and I wouldn’t want that, so I guess they’re off the hook, too. Except for Bellâ€¦everyone hates Bell, I hate Bell, they refuse to acknowledge that I paid themâ€¦instead of the collection agency, I paid them, in hopes that the collection agency would lose money and go out of business, I paid them. If I don’t have someone on call to collect at $50 debt, neither should Bell. Fuck Bell, but Laurence already ranted about Bell, so I guess I can’t.

I guess there’s no one or nothing I can rant about this week. Sorry Laurence, maybe next time!